Handwriting problems

illegibility: can America write?

some
facts on our handwriting crisis

 
			
			
			
			
The AMA's 1994 summer conference revealed that unreadable Rx's and medical records 
present a major health hazard. Statistics established that at least 1 in 10 Americans' 
health suffers because of physicians' handwriting.

See also the later research by Charles Inlander in his book MEDICINE ON TRIAL; 
pharmacists have difficulty reading 93% of the prescriptions they receive. 
Even in hospitals, 20% of prescriptions defeat all attempts to read them.

Click here for "Deadly Handwriting" -- how a doctor's scrawl caused brain injury, then death, to a patient.

In Queens, New York, another doctor's illegible handwriting kept his patient on dangerously wrong medication for almost a year. Click here to learn how it happened.

How a sloppily handwritten dosage amount killed a baby ... on his way to going home from the hospital.

For more disturbing events and statistics relating to
illegible medical
penmanship, click here to jump to "physicians' handwriting: the facts"
- further down on this page.



Bad
handwriting on prescriptions 'putting diabetics at risk'







THE COSTS OF
INCOMPETENT HANDWRITING

1. 
   

   Each year, unreadable tax-form addresses
   mean that up to
   $95,000,000 in tax refunds cannot reach the people who should receive
   them.

2. 
   

   A plane crashed in
   December 1992 ... because of poor handwriting. The pilot
   misunderstood the co-pilot's scribbled notes and instrument readings.
   Acting on this wrong information caused the crash and resulting deaths.
   (Source: the handwriting improvement guide PLEASE WRITE: HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR HANDWRITING FOR
   BUSINESS AND PLEASURE IN TEN QUICK AND EASY LESSONS by Wolf von Eckardt)

3. 
   

   Similarly, internal investigation of a 1965 NASA failure revealed the surprising cause: an engineer's scrawled
   (and misread) instructions. (Source: the handwriting improvement guide PLEASE WRITE: HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR HANDWRITING FOR
   BUSINESS AND PLEASURE IN TEN QUICK AND EASY LESSONS by Wolf von Eckardt)

4. 
   

   
   
   According to WIMA (the Writing Instrument Manufacturers
   Association) and other good-handwriting advocates, each year the United States loses over
   $200,000,000 for handwriting-related reasons. This far exceeds the
   severe economic loss that the
   FBI
   has traced to the thefts of computer hackers/crackers and other
   perpetrators of computer fraud.
   
   These $200,000,000 lost yearly because of problem handwriting include time and money lost because ...

5. 
   
   • --- people make phone calls to wrong or non-existent numbers ...
     
   • --- shipping firms deliver packages on the wrong dates or to the wrong
     addresses, or ship
     the wrong items ...
   • ---letters
     cannot arrive on
     time because no postal employee can make out the address.
     
     
     
     
   • Because of one illegible address, a
     heating company pumped oil into the basement of a house that did not
     even use oil heat. By the time the homeowner came home from work,
     the "trivial" address error had flooded his basement with oil.
     (Source: the handwriting illegibility/handwriting improvement section
     of RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LYCEUM AND CHAUTAUQUA
     CIRCUITS: WITH NOTES ON CALLIGRAPHY AND SCRIBAL WRITING by Raymond
     Franklin DaBoll and Irene Briggs DaBoll)
     
     
     
     
   • Since 1994, the Cohoes (New York) post office has
     needed to use a special facility called a Remote Encoding Center — one
     of 10 around the country, each staffed full-time around the clock —
     simply to decipher the region's daily load of illegibly addressed mail.
     
     
     
     
   • A 1980s Newsweek poll
     found that some 51% of secretaries have trouble reading their bosses'
     handwriting, and that this reduces their efficiency. (Source: the
     handwriting improvement guide PLEASE WRITE: HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR HANDWRITING FOR
     BUSINESS AND PLEASURE IN TEN QUICK AND EASY LESSONS by Wolf von Eckardt)
     
   • 
     
     Fortunately, we can all feel safer knowing
     that the handwriting crisis extends to the criminal world too.
     
     • In
       Rochester (New York) in 2002, a teenage girl bungled a bank robbery by
       not writing her hold-up note in a decipherable manner. Two bank tellers
       took so long to decipher her demand that the bank closed, trapping her
       with her loot behind locked doors for the police to find.
       
     • In 2003, two men in Mishawaka (Indiana) failed to
       rob a convenience store after the clerk had trouble deciphering their
       hold-up note. Before leading the store, one of the failed thieves
       berated the other for poor handwriting.
     • In 2007, a bank teller in Saskatoon (Saskatchewan,
       Canada) stood in puzzled silence before the man who had just handed her
       an illegibly scrawled piece of paper. When she did not respond to his
       hold-up note, the man fled.

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ILLEGIBILITY WARPS THE NAMES OF
PLACES:





HOME ON THE RANGE ...
which range?



In Ashland, Wisconsin, bad handwriting changed the
name of an iron-rich mountain range:

"Colonel Whittlesey, who was engaged in a geological survey of
Northern Wisconsin [in the 1850s], had found much to encourage settlers
to come to northern Wisconsin. The rich mineral wealth he found while
surveying the Penokee range promised the need for railroads to be
built. He had named the range 'Pewabic' (Indian word for iron) but his
poor penmanship was misread as Penokee which is the name that has
stayed with the range."





DOG-GONE HISTORY ...
when an explorer's scrawl goes west



The illegible writing of explorer Meriwether Lewis
left us guessing wrong - for almost two centuries - about the name of
his dog.   -

" ... Did you know?    . For
many years, scholars believed [explorer] Meriwether Lewis' Newfoundland
dog was named Scannon. Blame bad penmanship. About 20 years ago[, in
1985], historian Donald Jackson noticed a Montana stream in an
expedition map clearly designated as 'Seaman's Creek.' The explorers
used names of expedition members for many geographic features, but,

'No person named Seaman is known to have been
associated with the lives of either captain, and ... the word seems
strangely nautical in view of its location,' Jackson wrote in his book 'Among the Sleeping Giants.'

'It occurred to me[, said Jackson,] that the name
might be a garbled version of Scannon's Creek, in honor of the faithful
dog. ... No geographical feature had yet been named for him during the
entire expedition. I consulted microcopies of the journals held by the American
Philosophical Society, half suspecting I would find that
Seaman's Creek was actually Scannon's Creek. What I learned instead was
mildly startling. The stream was named Seaman's Creek because the dog's
name was Seaman.' ... "



Related info appears at

http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/inside/seaman.html

and

http://www.lewisandclarkphila.org/chapternews/chapterbooklist.html





FAKED ALASKA? No, mmm
— just named that way



Blame illegibility, not mischievous gnomes, for
the name of Nome, Alaska: the only American city named after an Arctic
geographical feature named after ... nothing.

According
to
the Nome, Alaska history-site, " ...
against its wishes the city was stuck with the unusual name of Nome.
Unlike other towns which are named for explorers, hero[e]s or
politicians, Nome was named as a result of ... error.

In the 1850's an officer on a British ship off the
coast of Alaska noted on a manuscript map that a nearby prominent point
was not identified. He wrote '? Name"' next to the point.

When the map was recopied, another draftsman
thought that the ? was a C [which could stand for 'Cape']
and
that the a in "Name" was an o, and thus a
map-maker in the British Admiralty christened 'Cape Nome.' "





SEGUIN ... er, SEGUIM
... er, SEQUIM, WASHINGTON -- when good names go postal.

In 1879, pioneers in the
northwestern United States named their settlement and its post office
"Seguin" because the town lay on a prairie of the same name. By 1907,
the U.S. Post Office had incorrectly registered the town's name --
twice -- thanks to poor handwriting on official reports in the days
before keyboarding. According
to city records,
"In 1907, due to a Postal Official's error in reading an official
report, the post office was titled 'Seguim' for approximately a month.
With the next report, the Official read the letter 'g' as a 'q' and the
post office here became known as 'Sequim.' The name change apparently
did not worry the residents enough to protest. It has been known as
Sequim ever since."

THE ILLEGIBLE
VACATION DESTINATION

Travelers throughout the UK and
around the world enjoy visiting Scotland and touring such scenic
islands as the Hebrides ... but how many of them know that this famous
name owes its current spelling and pronunciation to a long-ago
handwriting error? The
earliest
records
gave these islands the name of "Hebudae" or "Hebudes" -- when
eighteenth-century tourists rediscovered the locale and researched
island history, somebody mistook a handwritten "u" for a handwritten
"ri" ... once enough other writers had copied the original error, it
became official.

THE HIGHEST
POINT IN THE SKY, THE LOWEST POINT IN CONFUSION

Even the sciences do not escape
the terminological tumbles caused by scribbling scribes. The
astronomical term "zenith" -- meaning the highest point in the sky,
directly overhead -- started out as "samt": an Arabic word for "path"
that early astronomers used in the phrase "samt arras" meaning the
"path above the head." Medieval scribes,
rendering Arabic words in
Latin letters as they translated and copied, dutifully copied the
unfamiliar word ... but, then as now, an "m" in handwritten copy often
looked sloppy enough for the next person to read as "ni": eventually
creating "zenith" as other errors and variations in usage accumulated.


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THE PROBLEM IS WORLD WIDE


Is
this
cartooon (from The Hundu Business Line of India) the shape of
things to come things to come in Handwriting?

It doesn't have to happen! Learn how a computer or cell-phone can now
improve your handwriting.

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AMERICA THE
ILLEGIBLE:

HAIL (or
something) TO THE CHIEF:

According to the LOS ANGELES TIMES on November 9,
2007, a National
Archives audit of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library revealed
that the library had lost track of 80,000 of its 100,000 items — partly
because of the sloppy handwriting of presidential aides and other staff
who had selected, shipped, and catalogued the items.





ILLEGAL
IMMIGRANT? ILLEGIBLE IMMIGRATION OFFICER!

Vermont Public Radio reports (October 31, 2007)
on the illegibly scrawled visa waiver that turned a hopeful
tourist into an illegal immigrant. Valeria Vinnikova, fiancée of
Dartmouth College squash coach Hansi Wiens, had a visa waiver which
authorized her to remain in the USA till October 13, 2007 — according
to information provided to the soon-to-wed couple by a Homeland
Security officer in the U.S. Customs and Borders Protection division.
However ... the officer had misread the waiver's sloppily scrawled
expiration date — actually October 3. The ten days' error (created by a
couple of poorly written pen-strokes) caused Valeria to overstay her
visa: requiring the US Government to initiate deportation proceedings
which will bar Valeria from the country for ten years. As Vermont
Public
Radio notes: "Ten years of separation is not how Wiens
and Vinnikova planned to start their marriage." UPDATE: Some concerned folks at Dartmouth College
and elsewhere finally got this silly thing overturned — AFTER Valeria
spent 28 days in three jails. Free at last, free at last ...
until the next illegibly scribbling functionary comes along?

GIVING "THE
UNKNOWN SOLDIER" A WHOLE NEW MEANING:

A U.S. Government investigation reported by NEWSDAY
on November 10, 2007 revealed that a series of clerical errors
(including the common handwriting error of confusing an "8" with a "3")
left the wrong man buried in a hero's grave. The military cemetery
tombstone erected for Willie Hayes (born 1948), an honorably
discharged, triply decorated Vietnam war Army veteran, has turned out
to mark instead the body of William Hayes (born 1943) who left the Army
with a discharge other than honorable — and who died four years earlier
than Willie. Because William did not in fact qualify for a military
cemetery gravesite, the U.S. government has offered to pay for exhuming
William's remains and burying Willie in his place. However, notes NEWSDAY, "since four years have elapsed since
William Hayes was buried with military honors as Willie Hayes ... the
body might be so decomposed that undertakers would have next to nothing
to move."





SCOOTING "WRITE"
AHEAD OF THE LAW

According to this CNN report, when
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice-President Dick
Cheney, had to appear before the grand jury in his trial for
obstruction of justice and perjury, the court could not decipher
Scooter's voluminous handwritten notes which formed a key part of the
evidence in the trial. Therefore, Scooter received a rare privilege:
permission to read these notes to the prosecutor. This allowed Scooter
to claim that the notes said whatever Scooter wanted them to say.
Although the court convicted Scooter, the president has commuted this
conviction.

Outraged at handwriting corruption in high places?

Sign the

POLITICIAN LEGIBILITY ACT Petition!

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ILLEGIBILITY AND YOUR FAVORITE
FOODS:



GOOD GRAVY ... bad
recipe card



Did you know that the "v" in the word "gravy"
came from the bad handwriting of a medieval cook?

As Monash
University
linguistics professor Kate Burridge explains (in
pages 69 - 71 of Burridge's WEEDS IN THE GARDEN OF WORDS: FURTHER OBSERVATIONS
ON THE TANGLED HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE)

" ... the word gravy ... derives from Old French, either graine
meaning 'meat' or grané meaning 'grain of spice'.

... sometime during the 14th century, someone
slipped up in translating the original French cook books and misread
the 'n' of the French word — and the mistake stuck. ...

The problem was that the letters u, v,
i, m, and n were all very similar at the time.
The strokes were identical. To make matters worse, scribes didn't leave
a space between the letters. So if you had a whole lot of them together
it was extremely difficult to figure out what they represented. Let's
say you had five strokes in a row. That could represent uni,
uvi, imi, ivu, nui and a number of other
possibilities. Things were made even harder because it wasn't the
custom then to put a dot or a stroke above the letter 'i'. Small
wonder there was the occasional slip."

Click here to see a medieval cookbook page with "n"
often handwritten like "u" — and "u" often written like "n"

You'll find "graueye" — one way of spelling "gravy" back then —
on the second line from the bottom. Note how much the "u" in "graueye"
looks like the "n" in another word on the same cookbook page, "Codlyng"
["coddling"].

Confusing medieval letter-shapes like these led
Renaissance scribes to search for an easier-to-read alphabet style that
would still permit fast writing. Today, the quest for legibility
continues among those who like their handwriting clearer than their
gravy.





DELICIOUS,
NUTRITIOUS, CHOCOLATEY, ... and misunderstood



Next time you stir up a glass of Ovaltine, think of this: the drink's inventor, Swiss scientist George Wander
wanted to call it "Ovomaltine" because the original ingredients
included egg protein and malt. However,
his sloppy scrawl on the trademark application form left it officially
named "Ovaltine" for many years.

(In Switzerland and many other nations, the
product now has the name that Wander originally intended. But the USA
and the UK still call it "Ovaltine.")





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ILLEGIBILITY AND THE WORLD OF
MUSIC:







DEDICATED TO THE ONE
I DON'T CARE ABOUT —

HOW BEETHOVEN'S BAD
HANDWRITING IMMORTALIZED THE WRONG GIRL



You have probably played or heard Beethoven's
"Für Elise," the well-known piece he composed for the love of his
life: Therese von Brunswick.

THERESE von Brunswick?! Yes.

When the manuscript turned up after Therese's death,
Beethoven's semi-legible handwriting left the printer to guess about
the title ... and the printer guessed wrong. Unfortunately for Beethoven and the rest of us, since
Beethoven too had died he could not correct the error (which has
remained in all editions).





DOING THAT SCRIBBLE
THING —

HOW BAD HANDWRITING
RE-NAMED AN ERIC CLAPTON CLASSIC



Bad handwriting has affected the rock world, too.
Many Eric
Clapton fans have puzzled over the name of Clapton's
instrumental piece "Badge." Clapton wrote this piece as an instrumental
bridge while working with the band CREAM. The
band-leader, trying to decipher the scribbled score, mis-read Clapton's
hand-scrawled "Bridge" as "Badge."





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ILLEGIBILITY PUTS THE "GRINCH" ON
YOUR SEASON'S GREETINGS



HOLIDAY HANDWRITING
HAVOC: UK postal system destroys 5,000,000 illegibly addressed
Christmas cards and letters

According to this United Press International news release,
at
the end of 2006 Britain's Royal Mail (the UK postal service) had to
hire 3,000 new workers (more than twice its usual permanent staff of
1,400) just to decipher illegible addresses on holiday greetings.

Out of 2,000,000,000 cards and letters mailed in the UK during the
Christmas season, each year the Royal Mail must destroy 5,000,000 as
undeliverable because their addresses and return addresses defy
decipherment.

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ILLEGIBILITY CHANGES COMMON WORDS
AND FAMOUS NAMES



NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT:
When you have colds, flu, sinus problems, or allergies, say
"Gesundheit!" for medieval mangled handwriting

Etymologists (students of word origins) have
discovered that our word "sneeze" once began with an "f". Medieval
English called a sneeze a "fnese" — which certainly sounds much more
like sneezing than our version of the word. Partly because medieval
handwritten "f"s and "s"s look very much alike, so many people
perceived the "f" as an "s" that "sneeze" spread like a virus and
"fnese" blew into extinction. (Source: Canadian Broadcasting Company program on word
history)





SARAH JESSICA WHO?
How a handwriting error changed the name of your favorite actress

When celebrity-watching
journalist
Abigail Pogrebin interviewed HBO's Sarah Jessica Parker,
the actress revealed that her family owes its last name to a series of
bureaucratic blunders which included one handwriting error. Pogrebin
quotes
Parker in ABC news coverage: "My great-grandfather on my
father's side [was surnamed] 'Bar-Kahn' ... and the immigration officer
thought he said 'Parken.' He wrote his N's like R's, so 'Parken' became
'Parker' ... ".



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ILLEGIBILITY ALMOST "WROTE OFF" A
HANDWRITING PROGRAM:



SCHOOL DAZE: when bad
handwriting happens to good textbooks

Believe it or not, bad handwriting can prevent the
teaching of good handwriting. When Portland State University Continuing Education Press
produced the first edition of the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series,
textbook authors Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay
soon found that schools ordering the books weeks or months ago still
had not received them. After many frantic calls to the warehouse, the
ironic reason appeared.

A warehouse manager, trying to speed the books out
the door, had put a note on the books reading "Ship!" — but in
the manager's sloppy handwriting, the "h" looked like a "k":
changing
the message to "Skip!"

So, week after week, the warehouse employees
obediently skipped what needed shipping.



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ILLEGIBILITY ENRICHES FORGERS:



"MR. PRESIDENT, THIS
SURE TOOK A LONG TIME TO BOUNCE": forger signs bad checks as
not-so-"Honest Abe"

A New York City forger reportedly funded his
holiday shopping spree by signing all his bad checks with a scribbled
"Abraham Lincoln." The illegible handwriting kept people from
deciphering the famous name and becoming suspicious.

HARD TO READ, EASY
TO FORGE: if you want to get scammed, scrawl.

Many people suppose that unreadable signatures
somehow baffle forgers. In fact, forgers prefer victims who sign illegibly.
Imitating a clearly written signature
in
any style takes much more time and effort than imitating a
scribble.

Clear signatures pay off in other ways, too. When
Florida caricature artist Keelan Parham signed a piece legibly instead
of scrawling, this enabled an admirer of the drawing to track down the
artist and commission more work from him. Says Parham: "I never would
have gotten this job if she hadn't been able to read my signature."

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ILLEGIBILITY ENDANGERS STUDENT
ACHIEVEMENT:

San Diego literacy researcher Patrick Groff
has documented that at least one out of every three schoolteachers
writes so illegibly that the students have trouble reading
blackboard lessons, assignments, or the teacher's corrections on
written work. This plainly makes
learning - and teaching - a hazardous process.

Sometimes, the
teachers cannot even read their own handwriting: one
teacher's illegibly scrawled comment eventually turned out to read,
"Please write legibly!"

1. 
   

   Not only a teacher's scrawl, but a
   student's scribble, can affect the student's grades. Handwriting
   performance researcher Steve Graham reveals: "Two out of three kids in this country do not write
   well enough for their classroom work." (quote by Graham in the
   CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR's November 14, 2007 report on handwriting in
   America)
   
   
   
   Graham's and others' studies also show that better handwriting really
   does result in better grades for similar or identical work: as much as a full letter grade better,
   even
   if the teacher or exam grader has received (and has tried to
   follow) instructions not to allow handwriting to influence the grade.
   
   What does this mean when students with poor handwriting must compete
   against students with better handwriting? (for instance, on nationally
   standardized essay tests like the revised SAT's essay section — or
   on college-application essays or job-application forms)
   
   
   
   Some students facing exams,
   or their anxious parents, hope to avoid the consequences of
   dysfunctional handwriting by making special arrangements to gain an
   exemption permitting them to keyboard their essays. The Educational
   Testing Service — makers of the SAT exam — permits this in various cases if the student
   has a well-documented disability that affects handwriting.
   
   
   
   BUT ...
   
   
   
   not all students and parents who gain an SAT keyboard
   exemption make themselves aware of what happens to the exempted essays
   before grading.
   
   
   
   Before a keyboarded SAT essay goes to the graders, it
   reportedly has sometimes happened that the exam proctor copied out the
   essay by hand and submitted this copy instead of the student's original
   typescript. When this occurs (apparently without the knowledge or
   consent of the Educational
   Testing
   Service) it seems that the exam proctor does this in
   hopes to prevent graders and college admissions officers (who
   ultimately see these exams) from ascertaining whether or not a student
   had a disability affecting writing (something that they might otherwise
   ascertain by noting whether or not the student had used a keyboard).
   
   
   
   Results of this policy:
   
   
   
   /a/ many of the keyboarded essays reach the graders weeks
   or even months after the essays of other students (who handwrote their
   essays). Therefore, students who gained an exemption to keyboard
   have, at times, found their essay-test scores delayed by weeks or even
   months while other students (who handwrote because they needed no
   exemption) have already received their SAT scores and sent these scores
   to the colleges that the students would like to attend. The
   resulting delay in admissions, for students who received permission to
   keyboard on the SAT, may close these students out of the college
   programs of their choice as earlier entrants fill the places available.
   
   
   
   
   /b/ even if the examination proctor submits a handwritten
   copy of a s keyboarded essay promptly enough to allow reasonably swift
   grading, this necessarily makes that student dependent on the hope that
   whoever proctored the exam (usually a schoolteacher) may happen to
   write legibly..
   
   Vast numbers of teachers (and other adults who might proctor
   SAT exams) simply do not write legibly.
   
   So a student who gains permission to keyboard the SAT essay
   may not avoid handwriting difficulties after all. His or her score may
   suffer because of something that the student cannot control or improve:
   someone else's scrawl. (This may explain why students who could
   legitimately gain permission to keyboard their SAT essays have
   nevertheless come to me in search of better handwriting. They would
   rather have a chance of doing better because of their own improved
   handwriting than face a chance of doing worse because of someone else's
   poor writing.)
   
   
   
   .
   
   
   
   

Computers and pocket organizers, which many tech-savvy people tout as solutions, do not solve handwriting problems. 

For one thing, many hard-up schools and school districts lack the money to afford to buy or repair any computers - 
or even typewriters. A school that can't provide typewriters (even manual ones) for its typing classes probably will not have keyboards available for other work.)

And - even if everyone had a computer available, all the time - more and more of the new computers and pocket organizers rely on "non-keyboard input." Very often, this means "pen-based input", i.e., handwriting (entered with an electronic pen on a special tablet or screen - click here to find out more!)

If your "pen-based input" does not compute — if the machine cannot read your handwriting correctly — all the computing skills in the world will not help you use your computer.


1. 
   

   Shopping lists, quick notes, house
   addresses, phone numbers, Web-site addresses, Post-Its^(TM),
   doctors' appointment cards, coupons, & data-entry forms: where
   speed AND accuracy "on the run" have top priority, we still rely on the
   good old paper and pen/cil!)

   Handwriting classes for college
   students: the time may have come.

   Unheard of? Perhaps ... yet certainly
   necessary! At least, so says the Department of Art at Saint Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa.
   Continuing a policy established in the 1950s by an earlier Art
   Department head, the late Dr. Edward Catich (author of The Origin
   of the Serif), the Art Department requires ALL students who elect a
   calligraphy class to begin their studies with remedial penmanship,
   italic-style, using materials developed by Edward Catich and a later
   head, John Schmits.
   
   Said Schmits, shortly before his untimely death in 2005: "If I could, I
   would extend the penmanship requirement to the rest of the student
   body, not just the calligraphy students." The tradition, though,
   continues since his death: students in other departments (education,
   occupational therapy, etc.) can and do take the handwriting class along
   with the calligraphy students. The university requires all students
   taking this class to use their re-built penmanship for all their
   writing: in the classroom, and out.
   
   The results have overwhelmingly favored their efforts: not only in the
   life-long benefit to the students themselves, but in the effect on
   local private and public schools, as graduates often accept teaching
   positions in the Art department, teaching italic handwriting as
   calligraphy, in schools in Davenport and the surrounding area. To
   order teaching materials used for the handwriting class at Saint
   Ambrose University, contact the Saint Ambrose University Department of Art or the Saint Ambrose University Bookstore .
   
   

   Finally — what about the many
   situations which make keyboarding, tape-recording, etc., just plain
   impractical? ...How many of us can get through even one whole day
   without once needing to put pen or pencil to paper, without once
   needing to read the letters, words, and numbers handwritten by others?

physicians' handwriting: the facts

According to a study by the University of Minnesota
School of Public Health, illegible handwriting and transcription errors
cause over 60% of the medication mistakes in hospitals.

• Just how poorly do physicians write?
  Doctors' penmanship has reached such lows that many MDs write the names
  of different drugs identically - meaning that drug-manufacturers may
  soon need to change the names of commonly prescribed drugs to keep them
  from being confused with other commonly prescribed drugs. Renaming a
  medication - and publicizing the change - costs a great deal of money;
  almost certainly, the pharmaceutical industry passes the costs of these
  expensive changes on downwards to the consumer. For instance: even before the dangers of the
  arthritis medication Celebrex became known, medication errors involving
  the name of this product - misread in sloppy handwriting - killed
  patients because the sloppily handwritten name looked similar to the
  sloppily written names of other drugs which treated other conditions.
  Click here for a report on the confusion and its lethal consequences.
  

 

• Will computers solve all the problems? Probably
  not:
  more and more computers — for example, the Tablet PC —  dispense with keyboards
  by using pen-based input. Shortly after the release of the Tablet PC,
  Bill Gates announced Microsoft's
  plans to continue emphasizing handwriting as an
  important input method which will feature increasingly in future
  Microsoft computers.

 

• Do MDs really write worse than the rest
  of us? Not necessarily: but we see more of their handwriting (and
  it affects us more).
  

   

• Many physicians (and their patients)
  used to make jokes about doctors' handwriting and even
  circulate cartoons about doctors' handwriting. However,
  the serious consequences of medi-scrawl have begun to change people's
  attitudes.
  

   

• 
  
  • Almost daily, newspapers and magazines and academic studies — even
    doctors and medical students themselves — call medical penmanship"no
    laughing matter."
    

     

  • Television entertainment, too, now
    warns against medi-scrawl and shows it in dangerous action:
    
    • On NBC-TV's hit
      medical-drama TV series ER, a sick man becomes sicker because of an
      unclearly penned prescription issued by Dr. Peter Benton (played by Eriq
      LaSalle). (April 6, 2000 broadcast: Episode 130, titled "Viable
      Options")
      

       

    • In a later ER episode,during a staff training exercise Dr. Neela Rasgotra (played by Parminder Nagra) has trouble reading the
      handwriting of Dr. Tony Gates (played by John Stamos). (November 2, 2006 broadcast: Episode 273, "The Heart of
      the Matter")
      

       

    • On ABC-TV's hit
      medical-drama TV series GREY'S ANATOMY, intern Norman
      Shales (played by Edward Herrman) misreads a numeral and as a result
      incorrectly reports a patient as dead. (October 18, 2007 broadcast: episode 4.4,
      coincidentally also titled "The Heart of the Matter.")
      

       

    • Later in the same GREY'S ANATOMY episode, Dr. Isobel (Izzie) Stevens (played by Katherine Heigl) tells her interns: "Penmanship
      saves
      lives! Is that a 7, or is that a 9? If I have to ask myself that
      in the middle of an emergency, your patient is dead. You killed him.
      With your handwriting. Think about that!"

    top
    
    

---

Why the crisis?

How things got this way

 

• 
  

  Decreased
  emphasis, from decade to decade, on handwriting competence - Average
  instruction time for handwriting has shrunk, over the decades, to 5-10
  minutes a week; with usually no instruction/presentation after grades
  3-4. In other words: at just the point in education when one must write
  more - and write faster- in order to keep up with the work, the
  curriculum phases out even minimal instruction in handwriting).

 

• 
  

  You cannot teach
  what you do not know ... and teacher-training
  in most US states no longer includes any instruction in the teaching of
  handwriting. From the 1930s to the 1950s, handwriting started vanishing
  from more and more teachers'-college course-lists; by now, most
  teachers' colleges no longer even offer - let alone require taking -
  any course in how to teach handwriting. The vast majority of today's
  teachers'-college graduates no longer have to demonstrate competence in
  teaching handwriting - they do not even need to write legibly
  themselves - if they want to gain the credentials that will let them
  teach your child.

• 
  

  This means that
  today's teachers got their own final lessons in handwriting at about
  age seven or eight ... and they got those lessons from teachers who
  themselves received their own final training and evaluation in
  handwriting at that age. (Would you let your child learn any other
  subject/skill - math, science, history, or spelling - from someone
  whose teaching skills and subject-matter knowledge came entirely out of
  what that teacher remembered from attending the 2nd or 3rd grade of
  school?)

• 
  

  Even what little
  teaching a child may still get usually suffers because of the split
  between 2 divergent styles of letter:

We do not allow this artificial split in any
other area of education. For instance, we'd call it ridiculous to try
to teach math entirely in Roman numerals up into second or third grade,
then suddenly drop it all and start over again with modern Arabic
numerals or even algebra ... and we don't teach English by starting off
with Chinese.

 

Today's conventional cursive model (which
most of us have learned to regard as traditional) has rhythm and (at
its very best) even beauty. But even at its best it presents teaching
and performance problems:

For one example of the problems of
conventional cursive - the easiest problem to see, note the t-bar time-waster, illustrated
below:

(NOTE: thin lines - indicating motion during
pen-lifts - would of course follow a straight or nearly straight path
in rapid, high-quality handwriting. For visibility's sake, this
illustration bends them slightly out of the way.)

As the above diagram shows, students learning
conventional cursive typically learn not to complete (cross) the t
until after reaching the end of the word.

As shown, this requires the pen to waste
time: going into the air at the end of the word in order to travel all
the way back to the beginning of the word (thin line) in order to cross
the t, then going into the air again and traveling forward over the
entire word (thin line) in order to arrive (once again) at the end of
the word ... only then (after all this wasted time and motion) does the
writer reach the point at which he or she can go on to the next word.

By contrast, our civilization's original
cursive-handwriting manuals - in Renaissance Europe - avoided this
wastage by crossing the T upon writing it , not
procrastinating till the end of the word in today's fashion:

 

(The join, as shown here, extended from the
crossbar of t instead of from the base.)

The thin lines here show the much shorter
pen-in-air path, with almost zero back-and-forth wasted motion, that
was designed by those Renaissance originators of our cursive
handwriting - we can see the greater efficiency and orderly sequence
here: one finishes each and every letter (including the t) before
beginning the next.

Unfortunately for those of us who find
handwriting less than marvelously easy, Austin Norman Palmer
(originator of the famed "Palmer Method") and his equals in penmanship
— people who did so much to form the common mind (and hand) of our
nation — apparently gave as little throught as other men and women of
their time to the efficiency-minded cursive that their Renaissance
forebears had used.

Handwriting matters so much — and many
neglect it so much — that those who seek to defend it owe it to
themselves not to reject the traditional (as well as demonstrably
simpler and more efficient) Renaissance Italic cursive style in the
name of the complexities which became familiar in later times.

 

handwriting: some teaching/doing tips
for ANY style:

Consider the following:

In teaching, emphasize the downstrokes of
letters. Teach that these should, as a rule, parallel each other. Such
strokes should go parallel to the overall salnt of the writing, ALL the
way down until they hit a guide-line such as the "baseline" the writing
sits on, and/or the "very bottom line" that marks the bottom of the
descenders. Downstrokes need to reach this line before they
begin turning or curving into the next, upward stroke!

(Just this tip will improve the
appearance, legibility, & even speed unbelievably for most writers.)

NOTE: By down-strokes, I mean not only the
"obvious" ones (such as the long strokes in l, j, and
h) but also the ones that most school-models teach as curves or
parts of a circle:

e.g., the "left edge" of a letter like d
or g or a,

or the "right edge" of p or m
or n. 

Since a downstroke provides the easiest and
best control, motorically, I build as much of the letter as I can out
of a good, firm downstroke -- I find it helps to build the other
letters by learning to connect the down-strokes together in "motor
patterns" ("dinosaur teeth", --> v w etc. -- & "bumps" --> m
n h etc. -- & "waves" --> u y, etc., as well as other patterns

Use only about a 5-to-15 degree slant to the
right for cursive writing (also for manuscript if you want) -- this
will allow the "flow" of slant writing, while remaining very, very
legible because it writing will appear vertical or almost vertical (The
more slant, the less legibility. Though most of us need a bit of slant
for speed, we do not need more than a very slight slant for the sake of
speed.)

Most handwriting styles, from the dawn of the
written word. have gravitated to this 5-to-15-degree range of slant
when performed by the fastest and most legible writers: no matter what
writing tool or writing surface the writer used, and no matter what
slant the writer tried to emulate.

TO CHOOSE AND USE A SLANT WITHIN THIS
OPTIMAL RANGE:

CLICK HERE to download and print FREE 5-degree
slant paper.

CLICK HERE to download and print FREE 10-degree
slant paper.

CLICK HERE to download and print FREE 15-degree
slant paper.

(Above papers FREE for printing and download,

courtesy of David R. Goines, man of
arts and letters.)

For papers without slant lines — but with
many other helpful features — consider the Stage-Write
Handwriting Paper Series from Therapro.

For a history of slant and other features in
handwriting, and research supporting a slant of 5 to 15 degrees as well
as other features recommended on this page, I recommend HANDWRITING MODELS FOR SCHOOLS by handwriting
teacher and researcher Charles "Chuck" Lehman.

A word about joining ...

Wherever possible, join letters by using
straight, not curvy, lines: e.g.,use a straight, short horizontal to
join o to n (on), and a straight, short upwards
diagonal to join a to n (an).

Consider eliminating loops wherever possible
(for example: on ascender-letters such as l/h/k).
Teach/allow/encourage the writer to do these as retraced strokes,
and/or even with a pen-lift. This will vastly improve legibility!

Many legible/fast-writing adults naturally
write loop-free letters in any case, so eliminating loops arguably does
not make handwriting "wrong" even under the constraints of conventional
cursive.

STRONGLY consider allowing
and encouraging students to write "print-like" forms of capitals, even
in cursive writing (as long as these slant the same as the rest of the
cursive writing). At the very least, permit and encourage this for some
of the "twistier" & more confusible capitals such as the
conventional cursive S, G, I, J, etc.

 

Teach every student how to read and recognize
the fancy conventional forms ... but do not worry the student
about writing them! (Given proper techniques for learning to read that
fancy "cursive writing" stuff, learning to read it takes an hour or
less if the student can read ordinary printed letters. Learning to
write it, too, can take much, much longer. Today's crowded curriculum
may make it difficult to justify calling other classwork to a halt so
that students can spend a few months or a couple of years changing
their handwriting to a more elaborate style.)

Many adults, after all (including the most
legible rapid writers) "print" their capitals. Since capitals form only
2% of ordinary prose text, no reason demands teaching such
effort-intensive forms to everybody for all cursive writing. Cursive
writing, with every capital made in a "print-like" manner, remains 98%
conventional-cursive writing.

Similarly: especially where students have a
problem with lower-loop shaping (e.g., g, j, y), STRONGLY consider
teaching each student not to join/loop out of these letters,
but to make the "move" out of the letter "in the air" -- i.e., lift
the pen. A writer should also consider lifting the pen (instead of
joining) wherever he or she finds a particular join actually slower
(even after practice!) than just lifting the pen while moving
ahead to the next letter.

Frequent "trouble spots" that post far less
trouble when one teaches an efficient "air-join" instead of requiring a
twisty, convoluted "on-paper join" include: the letter-combinations ca,

gh and qu -

 

NOTE: Again, most fast/legible-writing adults
do normally eliminate some or many loops/joins in their
handwriting. Much of what schoolteachers and textbooks impose upon our
handwriting in elementary school burdens a handwriter with excess:
surplusage
that the fastest, clearest writers discard anyway as
they mature ... so why teach it to anyone in the first place? (E-mail me
for details on this, if it interests you ... or visit the Home of the Handwriting
Rebels and learn about others of a like mind )

 

VERY strongly consider using "print-like"
(not conventional- cursive) forms for the lower-case letters b,
f, r, s, & z

NOTE: For some letters,

this involves teaching/accepting

non-total joining of letters throughout
words.

Rest assured - the sky will not fall
in!

Many adults who write fast and legibly do it
by using print-like letter-shapes and not joining absolutely every
letter, rather than cope with 2 separate forms: manuscript and cursive.

Writing of this type removes the
"accident-proneness" from many handwritten alphabet-letters. With this
kind of writing, you don't get a b that looks like l -
an f that resembles b - a z that resembles y
or perhaps a distorted n - or an r or s that
looks more like a too-tight e or a dot-less i.)

Have students put the paper in front of their
"writing shoulder" (NOT in front of their heads!) -- righties by the
right shoulder, lefties by the left -- after all, the arm attaches on
that side. Some students will benefit by moving the paper even further
right (or left); depending on how widely they tend to swing the writing
arm.

 top 

---

looking at difficulties in handwriting

 

/1/ staircase of
handwriting function

 

optimal:

 

• self-administers (administers to others if
  required) handwriting maintenance/improvement procedures -
  self-monitors status of own handwriting (can monitor others'
  handwriting status if required)
• handwrites unambiguously at practical
  speed(s) for needed duration(s) of task
• the writer, and others who see and read
  his or her writing, find it at least cceptable in appearance: whether
  or not it conforms exactly with every details of a given school-style
  of handwriting.

 

approaching optimal:

• continues developing handwriting speed to
  needed level(s)
• handwrites unambiguously for increasing
  durations: word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, page, long task
• handwrites unambiguously anything s/he can
  say, hear, understand, or think
• handwrites unmistakably all letters,
  numerals, symbols, punctuation, abbreviations, etc. that s/he
  reads/knows/uses. (NOTE: This will vary depending on the needs of the
  person also because of our changing culture. For example: just a few
  decades ago, very few of us ever needed to write the @ symbol!)

 

not-yet-totally-functional handwriting

(includes most
of USA normal population!)

• handwrites legibly or at adequate
  speed or with ease - but does not manage to do all three
  together
• handwrites unambiguously all or most
  letters in one or more related-motion groups (such as u/a/c/d/g/q
  or n/r/m/h/b/p), but not all the letters and/or not all
  letter-combinations. This writer will show repeated and noticeable
  difficulties involving particular sequences of motion and/or particular
  letters/joins, especially in conventional cursive writing

 

someone who can write ...

but definitely
a "problem handwriter"

• handwrites unmistakably one or more
  letters, but not all of them
• may have (or have had) a lot of difficulty
  with conventional manuscript-then-cursive instruction: (He or she will
  probably tell you: "I hate cursive !")
• may "fight" conventional cursive , and/or
  attempt a "self-invented" way of writing (typically this will be some
  form of "printing," a mix of upper- & lower-case, and/or atypical
  ways of forming the letters (out-of-order strokes or directions)
  

 

someone in the following situation

may appear
unable to write by hand -

however,
appropriate methods and models for handwriting may make it possible for
this individual to develop some handwriting competence and ascend
higher on the "staircase":

• can hold some object, with some part of
  the body, &/or can move some object and/or body-part to make some
  type of mark (such as a dot or scribble) on some kind of surface.
  
• may require a special tool, writing
  surface, or other adaptation to do so

 

someone in the following situation
cannot write by hand:

 

• cannot voluntarily move any body part or
  hold any object in any manner whatsoever

 top 

---

/2/ trouble
spots in handwriting include:

 

conventional-print-writing
trouble
spot:

• requiring/presenting circle/vertical
  separate shapes for beginners' written letters - the shapes that most
  people, even adults, find  the most difficult to make (at
  least,without drafting tools). Even for people without disabilities,
  these shapes do not really relate to ordinary everyday patterns of
  movement.

 

conventional-cursive
trouble
spots:

• use of 2 opposed styles for writing, so
  that students must change their entire already-established writing
  style just to join letters: this means that later learnings oppose
  earlier ones (instead of building on them)
• requiring fancy versions of
   CAPITALS/b/f/r/s/z in joined writing ... this not only makes the
  letters very difficult to learn and distinguish, but makes them
  extremely dissimilar to the letter-shapes used almost all reading
  matter. In any case, these allegedly necessary fanciments (especially
  for the CAPITALS) do not even appear in the handwriting of many adults
  who write legibly at speed. This makes them difficult to justify on
  grounds of speed or "adultness." Difficulty in mastering these shapes
  also stems from their rarity: only 2% of ordinary prose text consists
  of capital letters, so a student usually does not encounter the
  elaborate conventional cursive forms often enough to remember them
  clearly, or to justify the extended practice that these elaborate
  shapes require for correct mastery, performance, and retention.
• asking for total joining/looping of all
  letters in script words
  

  (To experience this problem, try to write
  all these words, in good conventional cursive, without a single
  pen-lift inside any of the words. Can you? Probably not!)

  handwriting Constitutionally
  citizenship Thanksgiving grandmother scientific grandmother
  tyrannosaurus arithmetic thermometer astronomy eleemnosynary
  thyroidectomies uncopyrightable multiculturality
  antidisestablishmentarianism

  Some letter-combinations make it very
  hard to join legibly at speed. In many cases, a join/loop may even
  present more difficulties (and allow less speed and legibility) than
  just momentarily lifting the pen during the movement between letters.
  (Examples include joining into tall letters & a/c/d/g/q). Also, our
  attention spans and our hands often need a break from repetitive
  motions after 3 - 5 letters.

• presenting/teaching extreme "script"
  slant. Using a heavy slant (over 15 degrees to the right) removes the
  cursive letters even further from ordinary (type) letter-forms (a
  vertical stroke in type translates to a  strongly-slanted stroke
  in conventional cursive handwriting) ... also, it optically squashes
  letter-bodies, making them less easy to distinguish.

 

 top 

---

but does the
research support this?

 

If you take an interest in writing more
simply (and/or in teaching your children to do the same), you may ask:

"What research support this? Does this just represnt one person's - or
more than one person's - experience? Or have we any hard proof that the
things Kate suggests really make a difference?"

Current research does show that the
differences do make a difference: at least, if your goals in
handwriting include legibility and speed.

Here follows a summary of 1998 university
research on what makes for effective handwriting-skills:

this research, from the University of
Washington and the

University of Maryland, appears in the 1998 issue of HANDWRITING REVIEW, an annual (now semi-annual)
handwriting-research journal published by the Handwriting
Interest Group (HIG) at the University of Reading (UK).

Article title:

Virginia Berninger and Steve Graham -

"Language by Hand: A Synthesis of a Decade of Research on Handwriting,"
in HANDWRITING REVIEW (pp. 11-25). Reading (UK):
Handwriting Interest Group/University of Reading, 1998.

(Dr. Berninger conducts
learning-disabilities research at the University of Washington, and Dr.
Graham
teaches/researches in the Education Department of the
University of Maryland. Funding for the handwriting research done by Berninger
and Graham at both these universities came through grants from
the USA's National Institutes of Health [NIH], as part of NIH research
on assessment and intervention for writing disabilities.)

Berninger's and Graham's
research involved 900 children, 100 each in grades 1 through 9 - 50
boys and 50 girls in each grade, in two USA states (Maryland and
Washington).

Below, you'll find the HANDWRITING REVIEW
abstract of the article, then my own summary of some specific Berninger/Graham
findings which should interest anyone who cares about better, simpler,
basic handwriting and how to teach it:

ABSTRACT from Handwriting Review:

"An overview is provided of a decade of research in handwriting, with
an emphasis on the rôle of handwriting in composing for authentic
communications purposes. This research, which is a joint collaboration
of two research groups, is theory-driven and has examined the
neurodevelopmental underpinnings of handwriting, handwriting
development, gender differences, assessment practices, instructional
approaches, and transfer from handwriting to other writing and reading
skills. Key findings from this research program include (a) handwriting
automaticity
(producing accurate letters under time-limited conditions)
is important to writing development throughout the elementary school
years, and (b) handwriting is language by hand and involves
more than just fine motor skills."

SOME SPECIFIC FINDINGS OF NOTE summarized
by Kate
Gladstone:

/1/ many students do not follow the typical
classroom expectation of using only one of the types of handwriting
they learned

(manuscript - i.e., what most US people would
call "printing" & most British people would call "script"-

or cursive - i.e., what most US people would
call "script" & most British people would call "copperplate")

throughout a piece of writing. Instead, they
"mix" elements of both these systems. About 40% of the children
observed by Berninger and Graham habitually "mixed" handwriting-systems
in this manner.

 

/2/ about SPEED - Berninger and
Graham observed that those students who used such a "mixed" writing
wrote faster than the students who complied with the classroom
expectation of using either one or the other type of handwriting for a
given piece of work.

In other words, not only did the students
with "mixed" writing write faster than "print-writers" (we might
have expected that) but they *also* wrote faster than those
writing "properly" in all-cursive style (something we might NOT
have expected ... since people often think of "good handwriting" as
being synonymous with "doing it properly in cursive - because that
speeds the handwriting"... yet writing in "proper" relentlessly joined
cursive actually produces slower results, by test, than "mixing" one's
writing.)

(Note that those familiar only with conventional USA-style manuscript
and cursive systems generally apply this description of "mixed
handwriting" to Italic, the type of handwriting that I recommend.)

/3/ about LEGIBILITY - Berninger and
Graham observed that those students using such a "mixed" style of
writing wrote as legibly as, or more legibly than, students who
complied with the classroom expectation of writing either consistently
in conventional manuscript or consistently in conventional cursive.

In other words, any "proper" (100%-connected,
etc.) cursive program not only falls short in speed, but does not excel
in legibility either (and probably falls short in legibility as much as
in speed). So why insist on a conventional cursive style at any stage?

 

 

/4/ which is faster, manuscript or
cursive? - Berninger and Graham observed that work done
exclusively in cursive writing was not significantly faster
than work done exclusively in manuscript writing. (To measure
handwriting speed, the researchers counted how many accurate letters
each writer produced per minute.)

If a relentlessly joined and ornamented
cursive style - which some people feel must matter so very much - does
not even exceed the speed of "printing", what reason exists to teach it?

 

/5/ which permits better legibility,
cursive writing or manuscript writing? - Berninger and Graham also
observed that work done exclusively in manuscript writing did not
make for easier reading than work done exclusively in cursive writing.

(The researchers evaluated legibility with
the Test of Legible Handwriting authored by Larsen and Hammill in 1989.)

 

To me, findings /1/ - /5/ imply that
classroom "either/or" expectations for disparate styles -

"manuscript is manuscript, and cursive is cursive, and never the twain
shall meet" -

have counter-productive results, and that instead of imposing a pair of
disparate styles in quick succession we should definitely teach a
consistent form of handwriting that combines the best elements of these
styles.

After all, even when 40% of kids write in a
"mixed" way without any instruction or encouragement in doing
so, their "mixed" writing has superior results in speed and has at
least equal results in legibility.

 

 

Some additional Berninger/Graham findings:

 

/6/ Berninger and Graham observed that the
average speed and legibility of children's handwriting rose steadily,
grade after grade, from first through ninth grade (complete tables are
given in their article) with one striking exception - while
children were in third grade, their speed and legibility reverted to
first-grade levels (only afterwards, in fourth grade, did the speed and
legibility slowly begin to rise again.)

The authors attribute this loss of
handwriting competence to the fact that third-grade students in the USA
are normally required to change their handwritings - this is typically
the year when students are expected to alter their handwriting-style
from what they were previously taught (manuscript) and now write in a
very different style (cursive).

(To me, finding /6/ implies that classroom
expectations for a change of styles are counter-productive, and that
instead we should be teaching a single style to prevent this
regression.)

 

general observations relating to
teaching/learning of any style

 

/7/ Berninger and Graham observed that girls
in the study typically wrote more fluently than boys, and that this
fluency seemed to translate into girls getting better grades for
written work than boys -

there also appears some evidence, according to Berninger and Graham,
that most girls use left-hemisphere processing for handwriting
(mentally coding letters verbally) but most boys use right-hemisphere
processing (coding letters spatially) and that the spatial coding slows
retrieval (makes it more difficult to remember, on demand, how a letter
is to look

 

/8/ Berninger and Graham observed also that,
when handwriting instruction involves what the researchers called
"verbal mediation"

(verbalizing specific directions for how to
form the letter in connection with tracing/copying/writing),

handwriting-learning and -performance
actually deteriorate

(i.e., students who receive "verbal
mediation" as part of their handwriting instruction do *less* well than
students who receive the same trace/copy/write instruction but with the
verbal-mediation component *left out*) -

 

Berninger and Graham suspect that adding the
task of verbal comprehension/memorization/description to the task of
mastering/using handwriting, in their words, "uses up limited working
memory resources in the beginning writer."

(I'd like to note at this point that many
"standard" handwriting-instruction programs in the USA

(and perhaps in other countries too?)

specifically *require* teachers and/or
students to use this counter-productive "verbal mediation"-style
step-by-step oral description of letters and/or strokes.)

 

Yet ANOTHER interesting finding of the
Berninger/Graham team was this:

/9/

When the researchers compared the
effectiveness of various strategies in handwriting-instruction other
than hearing/memorizing verbal descriptions

(copying a model-letter,

demonstrating the motor acts involved in
forming a letter & asking students to copy these acts,

providing numbered arrows as visual cues for
letter-formation -

requiring students to write letters from
memory after increasing

time-intervals -

using both numbered arrows *and* writing of
letters from memory after

increasing intervals) -

it was the combination of numbered arrows
and writing from memory after increasing intervals that
produced significantly greater improvement in handwriting, and greater
"automaticity" of handwriting behavior

(students did not have to consciously think
about how to form each letter every time)

compared with any of the other approaches or
with a "no intervention" approach ("control" group)

 

- the combination of numbered arrows
and writing from memory after increasing intervals also
produced significantly greater transfer of handwriting-skills into the
students' written composition outside of handwriting-instruction
copying-tasks.

(What was interesting to me here was that
"copy the model", which is probably THE most common and typical
strategy of classroom teachers, appeared *not* to actually be the best
strategy for teaching/learning of letter-forms.

Numbered arrows (one component of the study's
most successful strategy) are of course common, but I know *very* few
if any teachers/curricula who use or even *mention* the other half of
the most successful strategy (memory after increasing intervals) in
learning letter-forms. Try both halves of that most successful
strategy (numbered arrows and writing letters from memory
after increasing intervals of time) and tell me
what you think!)

 top 

---

short resource list (some available
materials)

Fairbank, Alfred, A Handwriting Manual and
A Book of Scripts.

(out of print: stocks still available from John Neal,
Bookseller, Inc., 1-800-369-9598 or e-mail JNealBooks@aol.com)

Getty,
Barbara and Dubay, Inga, Write Now: A Complete
Self-Teaching Program For Better Handwriting

Portland [OR]: Portland State University Media Resources, 1991
(1-800-547-8887, extension 4891. Other materials are also available
from this source)

Jarman,
Christopher, Development of Handwriting Skills. Second
edition. Melbourne (Australia): Basil Blackwell, 1999 - or e-mail
Christopher at quilljar@btinternet.com

- or visit
his
handwriting site to learn more

Lehman, Charles L., Handwriting Models
for Schools. (out of print, but stocks still available from John Neal,
Bookseller, Inc. 1-800-369-9598 or e-mail JNealBooks@aol.com
). You may also wish to inquire from Charles L. Lehman himself at
scribe@hevanet.com
... and you may enjoy visiting his web-site at http://www.hevanet.com/scribe
. 

For a much fuller resource list

(now 60 kilobytes!), e-mail me -

make sure that your
message's SUBJECT-line contains the words "handwriting resource list"

If your handwriting crisis can't wait ...

CLICK HERE for Handwriting Repair (tm) sessions on
eBay!

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Chicken-scratchers,
don't despair! By these presents know ye: Writing "fowl" deserves
repair -- Then its looks will blow ye!

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Kate
Gladstone -

The Handwriting Repairwoman

Kate Gladstone

NEW ADDRESS

325 South Manning Boulevard

Albany, NY 12208 1942 USA

telephone: 1 518 482 6763 

e-mail: handwritingrepair@gmail.com

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Many physicians claim that pharmacists
can always read any prescription, no matter how difficult, if they try.
Yet numerous pharmacist- and physician-oriented
journals, web-sites, and blogs display the most strikingly illegible
"mystery scripts" chosen from among the thousands of prescriptions seen
by the authors/editors or sent in by readers. Sometimes, after
displaying one of these difficult puzzles the editor or site-owner
provides the correct reading. However, patients deserve the correct
medication more than "sometimes.

The prescription puzzle "guessing game"
has serious consequences. Click
here
for the Institute of Safe Medication Practices' (ISMP)
16-July-1997 report of a case in which a physician, a pharmacist and a
pharmacy all faced a lawsuit for damages as a result of a death caused
by the physician's illegible handwriting - the report includes a
graphic of the illegibly lethal prescription. According to the
ISMP: "This [death] ... could set a new standard of practice."

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